School choice has big impact on budgets

Each year, millions of dollars in state funding flows from school system to school system, following students whose parents send them to a neighboring community.

Gerry Tuoti Wicked Local Newsbank Editor

Each year, millions of dollars in state funding flows from school system to school system, following students whose parents send them to a neighboring community.

In Massachusetts, a 1991 initiative known as inter-district school choice gives parents the option of enrolling their children in a public school district in a community other than their hometown. While the law lets each school district decide whether to accept out-of-district students, no district can deny its students the right to leave.

“School choice money can be a major factor in determining both the revenue you gain and the revenue you lose for many school districts,” said Glenn Koocher, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of School Committees. “Depending on where you are, districts may really depend on that money to sustain the services they’re able to provide to students … School choice has made districts a little more competitive with each other.”

Since state funding follows the students, school choice has had the unintended consequence of widening the gap between affluent suburban districts and cash-strapped urban and rural school systems, according to some critics. When a student leaves one public school system for another, state funding goes from the sending district to the receiving district in the form of school choice tuition. To soften the blow for sending districts, the state caps school choice tuition payments at $5,000 per student.

For districts that gain and lose large numbers of school choice students, the aggregate financial impact can be large.

Opposite experiences among neighbors

In the small town of Avon, more than a quarter of all students enrolled in the public school system come from other communities on school choice. According to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, school choice students brought more than $958,000 into Avon last fiscal year.

“The choice revenue is close to a million dollars, or about 11 percent of our budget,” Avon Superintendent Paul Zinni said. “When you’re talking about 11 percent added into your budget, that’s significant.”

In nearby Brockton and Randolph, the situation is drastically different. Randolph lost more than $850,000 due to school choice last year, while Brockton lost $1.3 million, according to the DESE.

Brockton schools have struggled financially in recent years, and losing students to both school choice and charter schools hasn’t helped.

“We’ve cut almost every program and extracurricular,” said Brockton’s chief budget officer, Aldo Petronio. “We’ve laid off probably 150 teachers out of 1,400 over the past few years.”

Petronio, though, said the impact of school choice has been minimal compared to charter schools. Because of the cap on school choice tuition, Brockton loses $5,000 per student leaving on school choice. Each student who leaves for a charter school, however, draws more than $11,000 in funding away from the district, he said.

“I think charter schools should be funded the same way school choice is funded, with a cap of $5,000 per student,” Petronio said.

Koocher said similar concerns are common in urban districts losing large numbers of students to charter schools.

“If a charter school comes in and disrupts the entire economy of scale, that can be enraging to a district,” Koocher said. “With school choice at $5,000 per kid, you’re willing to live with that even if you’re not happy with it. But with charters, you could lose $18,000 per kid. It’s a white hot, if not blue hot, public policy issue because you can really cripple a district with a charter school draining the money.”

Marketing themselves

In recent years, many public schools have undertaken more efforts to market themselves to parents in the community, highlighting programs and success stories. The intent is to retain some of the families thinking about sending their children elsewhere.

Milford Superintendent of School Kevin McIntyre said such outreach efforts have become much more common throughout the state.

“I would say a decade ago, a lot of schools didn’t necessarily have to market to their own residents,” he said. “Now we find we have to share all the great things that are happening in the Milford Public Schools on a regular basis with members of our community.”

Milford lost $1.2 million in funding due to 198 students leaving in fiscal 2017, but brought in more than $584,000 from 103 pupils opting into the district, according to the DESE. Internal district data McIntyre provided is slightly different from the state data, showing 112 students coming in and 193 leaving.

“We definitely have a school choice deficit, but over the last few years, we’ve been seeing that trend start to reverse,” McIntyre said. “We’re seeing the number of students choicing in increasing dramatically.”

The increase in students coming in has led to Milford having to turn away some school choice students in certain grades due to limited capacity. When demand exceeds capacity, the state requires receiving school districts to hold a blind lottery. Preference can be given to siblings of students already in the school system.

“Sometimes a neighboring district may have a program we don’t offer that may meet a student’s needs. Conversely, a student may come into Milford because of a program we have that isn’t available in their home district,” McIntyre said. “Giving parents options has been a positive thing.”